As Android rises, Windows Phone surpasses BlackBerry market share

Android is the most popular smartphone operating system, and the gap between competitors is growing, according to analyst firm Kantar. While the continued growth of Android is not surprising, eyebrows may raise at the decline of RIM's BlackBerry. Despite once being the leading smartphone platform in the world, BlackBerry has fallen to fourth place behind Windows Phone in eight key markets.

BlackBerry remains ahead of Windows Phone on a global scale, but Kantar reports that Windows Phone sales in the 12 weeks ending in August outpaced BlackBerry in a handful of countries. Windows Phone had a combined 4.8 percent market share in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. That's better than the 3.8 percent reported by RIM, which fell from 8.2 percent reported during the same period last year. Windows Phone grew slowly despite a promise of newer Windows Phone 8 devices set to debut this year, and Microsoft's mobile OS even managed to outsell Apple's iPhone 14.9 to 7.5 in Brazil.

While the Windows Phone growth is encouraging for Microsoft and its manufacturing partners, it's still just a fraction of what Android sold in the past three months. Android accounted for 61.2 percent of smartphone sales, up from 52.2 percent during the same period last year. iOS sales were 23.7 percent, up from 23.3; Symbian was 3.2 percent, down from 9.8; and Bada secured 1.3 percent, down from 1.5 percent. Some operating systems were more successful in certain countries - 86 percent of all sales in Spain were for Android phones - but the overall trend shows a large gap between the top two platforms. Kantar's full market share report is available here.